91 Fun Facts About Inca Empire

Which disease is thought to have swept through the Inca Empire even before the Spanish conquerors arrived?

Smallpox likely spread down from Central America ahead of the invaders, killing huge numbers of people and probably the emperor Huayna Capac and his chosen heir.

Which language did the Incas promote as the official tongue of their empire?

Quechua was carried by the Incas into areas such as Ecuador, where it is still widely spoken, and millions of people across the Andes speak it today.

What is the name of the knotted-string device the Incas used for record keeping?

Quipu cords kept census counts in their knots, but after the Spanish conquest many were sought out and destroyed as suspect records.

Which name did José Gabriel Condorcanqui take when he led a 1780 uprising against Spanish rule in Peru?

Túpac Amaru II was executed after the uprising failed, and two centuries later the rapper Tupac Shakur was named after him.

Which sun god did the Inca emperors claim as their divine ancestor?

Inti's worship was required of conquered peoples to back the Incas' claim to divine rule, though local gods were still tolerated.

Which conquistador helped capture the Inca emperor, then later led a Spanish expedition across the southeastern United States?

Hernando de Soto's share of the plunder made him one of the richest returning conquistadors, and he later died beside the Mississippi River.

In one legend, the founding couple Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo emerged from which body of water?

Lake Titicaca was their starting point in that telling, and they settled where their golden staff sank easily into the ground.

What did the Spanish do with many stones from the Inca fortress Sacsayhuamán?

The Spanish reused them in colonial buildings, dismantling much of the fortress within years of holding it against a large Inca siege.

What did the Incas usually do first when they wanted to absorb a neighbouring people?

The Incas sent them lavish gifts, and those who refused to submit faced military conquest.

What did the Incas do with the mummies of their dead emperors?

The Incas offered them food and consulted them on state affairs, bringing the mummies out in fine regalia for major ceremonies.

Which people traditionally halted the Inca advance south at the Maule River?

The Mapuche later beat back Spanish conquistadors in Chile as well, just as they had resisted the Inca armies.

Why was the captured Inca emperor strangled rather than burned at the stake?

He agreed to be baptised when friar Vicente de Valverde offered the gentler garrote in exchange for converting to Christianity.

Which two sons of Huayna Capac fought the civil war that weakened the empire before the Spanish arrived?

Huascar and Atahualpa fought until Atahualpa captured his half-brother and had his kin killed, shortly before the Spanish arrived.

What did the imprisoned Inca emperor promise his Spanish captors?

A room of gold plus twice that in silver was duly delivered, but his captors executed him anyway.

Which conquistador was Francisco Pizarro's partner in the conquest of Peru, before their rivalry turned deadly?

Diego de Almagro was executed on the orders of Pizarro's brother, and Almagro's supporters later broke into Pizarro's palace and killed him.

To which remote refuge did Manco Inca retreat to found the Neo-Inca State?

Vilcabamba became his base after he rebelled against the Spanish, who had first installed him as their puppet ruler.

Why did each new Inca emperor need to conquer fresh territory?

The dead ruler kept his lands for his own descendants, so a new king had to win territory and build his own palace.

Which American explorer brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?

Hiram Bingham took thousands of its artifacts to Yale, starting a custody fight with Peru that lasted nearly a century.

What happened to Machu Picchu when Spain conquered the Incas?

The invaders never found it, though it lay only about 80 km from the Inca capital they seized.

What is the indigenous name of the Inca road network, meaning 'royal road'?

The Qhapaq Nan was built mainly to move soldiers, officials and llama caravans across the empire.

What did Inca road builders use to cross deep mountain gorges?

Rope suspension bridges woven from grass spanned the gorges, and villagers still reweave the Q'eswachaka bridge by hand every year.

What were the relay runners who carried messages along the Inca roads called?

Chasquis ran short stages and handed off to fresh runners at each post, so messages could travel about 240 km in a day.

What were the state-run way-stations along Inca roads called?

Tambos stocked food and supplies and lodged officials and marching armies as they moved along the roads.

What did the Incas consider silver to be?

The tears of the moon lined the moon goddess's shrine with silver, just as gold lined the sun god's temple.

What is chuño, the long-keeping food eaten in the Andes since Inca times?

Freeze-dried potato could be stored for years, and by 1590 it was traded in bulk to feed the silver miners of Potosí.

What was the name of the circular terraced site thought to be an Inca agricultural experiment station?

Moray's sunken rings of terraces grow warmer or cooler level by level, creating microclimates that may have been used to test crops.

Which art form did the Incas themselves prize most highly?

Woven textiles outranked even gold and silver, and fine cloth was handed out as payment and rewards and offered to the gods.

What did the conquistadors do with almost all the Inca gold and silver artworks they seized?

They melted them down and shipped the metal to Spain, so only a tiny fraction of Inca goldwork survives today.

What were the three moral precepts of Inca society?

Ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella were taught in the assemblies of the ayllu.

Which surgery did Inca healers perform with most patients surviving?

Cutting holes in the skull was survived by about 75 to 90 percent of Inca-era patients, depending on the study, against under half in the earliest Andean surgeries.

What is remarkable about the stonework of prime Inca buildings?

Blocks fit so tightly no knife can enter, and these mortarless walls have come through 500 years of earthquakes with remarkably little damage.

How did Inca nobles show their rank on their bodies?

Huge gold ear ornaments stretched their earlobes so far that the Spaniards nicknamed the nobles orejones, or 'big ears'.

What was the name of the Inca child-sacrifice ritual performed at events such as an emperor's death?

Capacocha children were chosen from towns across the empire and led on long pilgrimages to high mountain shrines to be sacrificed.

On what number system was the Inca provincial administration organised?

Decimal units grouped taxpayers in tens, hundreds and thousands, and each unit's head answered to the leader of the unit above.

Why did the Incas carry off the sacred idols of the peoples they conquered?

Probably to hold them as hostages, since a people was thought less likely to rebel while its own gods were in Inca hands.

What did Francisco Pizarro name the Spanish capital he founded on Peru's coast, now called Lima?

City of the Kings honoured the Magi, the three kings of the Bible story, because the city's founding was tied to the feast of the Epiphany.

Which two earlier Andean empires preceded the Incas and shaped many of their features?

Tiwanaku and Wari had both collapsed centuries earlier, but Tiwanaku's ruined monuments inspired Inca stone art and architecture.

What did the Incas do when a lunar eclipse darkened the moon?

People made as much noise as possible to save the moon, which in one telling was under attack from a beast that would plunge the world into darkness.

Which small animals did Inca-era families raise around their huts for meat?

Guinea pigs were also among the animals the Incas most often sacrificed to their gods, alongside llamas.

How did the Inca emperor travel on his tours of the empire?

Carried in a litter by nobles, he was captured only after the Spaniards cut down its bearers and toppled it.

How did Manco Inca, leader of the great Inca revolt, die?

Manco was killed by Spaniards he sheltered, fugitives from a rival Spanish faction, and his soldiers then killed them all.

What epithet, given to the ninth Sapa Inca after he defeated the Chancas, means 'the turn of the world'?

Pachacuti is widely thought to have had Machu Picchu built as a royal estate for himself.

What did the future conqueror of Peru use to dare his weary men to keep going?

A line in the sand, drawn with his sword, split Peru's riches from Panama's poverty, and only 13 men crossed it to join him.

What did an Inca emperor wear across his brow as the sign of royal power?

A red fringe hanging across the brow served as the Inca crown, and a new ruler took power by receiving it.

How did the Inca army besieging Spanish-held Cusco in 1536 set the city ablaze?

Red-hot stones from slings set the thatched roofs burning, yet the small Spanish garrison held out until reinforcements arrived.

What did the Incas do to keep a newly conquered province from rebelling?

Moved in loyal settlers, while rebellious villagers were often shipped off to long-loyal regions, which wore down resistance.

Whom did later Inca emperors take as their principal wife?

Their own sister became queen, a custom meant to keep the heir's bloodline purely descended from the Sun.

Who were the amautas in Inca society?

Teachers of the nobility's children, the amautas schooled the empire's future rulers in religion, history and government.

Which English food word comes from the official language of the Inca Empire?

Jerky began as charqui, meat Andean people cut in thin strips and dried so it would keep without spoiling.

What did ordinary Inca families owe the state as their tax?

Labour service, called mit'a, raised soldiers and kept the roads in repair, in an empire that ran largely without money or markets.

What office did the Willaq Umu, usually a brother of the emperor, hold?

Chief Priest of the Sun, he was probably the empire's second most powerful figure, leading the priests who tended the temple's gold and silver images.

Which animal, the only beast of burden in the Inca Empire, carried loads along its mountain roads?

Llama caravans were the empire's only pack trains, since the Andes had no oxen or mules before the Spanish came. Inca nobles were often buried with small figures of the animal.

Which basic tool of most large economies did the Inca Empire largely function without, relying on reciprocity instead?

Money played almost no part in Inca life, and neither did markets. Goods changed hands by mutual obligation, and the state repaid its subjects with land and great feasts of food and drink.

Most archaeologists believe Machu Picchu was built around 1450 to serve as what for an Inca emperor?

A royal estate is the consensus: a mountain retreat for the emperor and his court. Only about 750 people lived there, most of them permanent servants.

Which 2000 Disney comedy, set in a land modelled on Inca Peru, follows the spoiled Kuzco after he becomes an animal?

The Emperor's New Groove was conceived in 1994 as a sweeping musical epic titled Kingdom of the Sun. Disney tore that version up and rebuilt it as a buddy comedy.

In Inca legend, what did the founder Manco Capac carry that sank into the earth to mark the site of the capital?

A golden staff, a present from the sun god, was the test the wanderers carried. Where it sank out of sight they were to stop, settle and found their city.

The Inca capital Cusco is widely believed to have been laid out in the shape of which sacred animal?

Puma is the outline many see in old Cusco's street plan. In Inca belief the big cat stood for the earthly world of the living, between the heavens above and the underworld below.

Francisco Pizarro was a distant cousin of which fellow conquistador, whose success inspired his own expeditions south?

Hernán Cortés was Pizarro's second cousin once removed. Reports of what he had won in Mexico helped push Pizarro to go looking for a rich kingdom of his own.

What did the Inca emperor throw to the ground at Cajamarca in 1532, giving the Spaniards their cue to attack?

A prayer book, the breviary of the friar Vicente de Valverde, was handed over on request, looked at briefly and tossed aside. The friar ran back calling for the attack.

Which protein-rich Andean seed crop did the Incas nickname the 'mother of all grains'?

Quinoa was chisiya mama to the Incas. Botanically it is no grain at all: the plant is not a grass but a close relative of spinach.

Inca stone walls in Cusco have famously outlasted later Spanish buildings by surviving which recurring natural hazard?

Earthquakes make the mortarless stones shift and then settle back. Observers have described the masonry 'dancing' in strong tremors before dropping into its old position.

Which leaf, chewed with lime to dull hunger and fatigue, did the Incas treat as divine and reserve largely for nobles?

Coca was thought to have a divine origin, so the state kept a monopoly on growing it. Gold models of the plant even stood in the sacred gardens of the Inca in Cusco.

What shape are the doorways, windows and wall niches that are a hallmark of Inca buildings such as Machu Picchu?

Trapezoid openings, narrower at the top than at the foot, turn up wherever the Incas built. The grandest were dressed up with double or even triple jambs.

Which Andean earth-mother goddess is still honoured by spilling a little drink on the ground before a toast?

Pachamama gets the first sip at Andean gatherings, and her main rites fill the whole of August. Left unfed, she is said to grow hungry and upset the balance of the world.

Ingapirca, whose elliptical Temple of the Sun is built around a large rock, is the largest Inca ruin in which country?

Ecuador's Ingapirca takes its name from the Kichwa for 'Inca wall'. The Cañari people had long lived on the spot, which they called Hatun Cañar.

Before conquering Peru, Francisco Pizarro crossed Panama in 1513 with Balboa's expedition to reach which body of water?

The Pacific Ocean had never been seen from the Americas by Europeans until that march. A few years later Pizarro arrested his old commander Balboa, who was beheaded in 1519.

Which American university agreed in 2010 to return thousands of artifacts its expeditions had taken from Machu Picchu?

Yale University had held the finds since its expeditions dug at the site from 1912. The first batch of pottery went home to Peru in 2011, and the last followed late in 2012.

Which bearded Inca creator god was said to have walked away across the sea, never to return?

Viracocha was the supreme Inca god, the maker of all things. In the myth he and two companions reached the coast and simply walked out over the water until they vanished.

Which temple in Cusco, the holiest in the Inca Empire, once had walls covered in sheets of gold?

Coricancha's courtyard was filled with statues of the same metal. Its Inca stonework now serves as the foundation of the church and convent of Santo Domingo.

Machu Picchu's builders quarried most of their stone on the ridge itself; which hard rock did they cut it from?

Granite boulders lay in a natural jumble on the ridge, so the quarry sat inside the site itself. The semicircular Torreón was raised among some of the largest blocks.

Which wild Andean animal's fleece was so prized that only Inca royalty were allowed to wear garments made from it?

Vicuña wool is among the finest fibres in the world, and each animal can be shorn only once every three years. The creature now appears on Peru's coat of arms.

Which giant bird was believed in Andean mythology to rule the upper world of the heavens?

Condor wings can stretch 3.3 metres and have the largest surface area of any living bird. Andean peoples tied the great soarer to the sun and have pictured it in their art for 4,500 years.

Which vast lowland region east of the Andes did Inca armies push into, only to be stopped by the Shuar people?

The Amazon was where Inca expansion stalled: in 1527 the Shuar halted a push into the basin near the Chinchipe River, only a few years before the Spanish landed.

In a worldwide poll that closed in 2007, Machu Picchu was voted onto which list alongside the Taj Mahal and Petra?

New Seven Wonders winners were announced in Lisbon on 7 July 2007 after web and telephone voting. UNESCO, which had listed Machu Picchu back in 1983, kept its distance from the contest.

Which animals did Pizarro's men hang with ringing bells to terrify the Inca army at Cajamarca in 1532?

Horses, 62 of them, burst out of the alleys around the square with bells jangling while guns fired from cover. The Inca host had never met firearms before.

Which kingdom on Peru's coast, the largest of its era, fell to the Incas around 1470 along with its capital Chan Chan?

Chimú lands ran along 1,000 kilometres of coastline. The kingdom fell to Topa Inca Yupanqui only about fifty years before the Spanish reached the region.

What name was given to the frozen Inca girl, nicknamed the Ice Maiden, found on Peru's Mount Ampato in 1995?

Juanita came to light when melting ice and erosion exposed her burial bundle. She had lain frozen near the summit for some five centuries, a girl of about 12 to 15.

Which legendary lost Inca city of riches is said to lie hidden in the rainforest east of the Andes?

Paititi is placed by its seekers in the jungles of southeast Peru, northern Bolivia or northwest Brazil. A missionary's report of it surfaced in the Jesuit archives in Rome as late as 2001.

At which Sacred Valley stronghold did Manco Inca defeat a Spanish force in 1537 by flooding the plain below?

Ollantaytambo's high terraces let Manco Inca's men block the Spanish advance while the plain was flooded. Three years later its people were assigned to Hernando Pizarro.

Which river rises in the Andes southeast of Cusco, flows through the Sacred Valley and passes the foot of Machu Picchu?

Urubamba is only the river's lower name: upstream it is called the Vilcanota, possibly from words meaning 'house of the sun'. Inca ruins line its valley.

In the Inca origin legend of the four Ayar brothers and their four sisters, the ancestors first emerged from what?

A hillside cave with three mouths was the birthplace. The eight siblings stepped from the middle opening, and the forebears of the other Inca clans from the two at the sides.

Which chronicler, the son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, wrote the Royal Commentaries of the Incas?

Garcilaso de la Vega wrote it far from the Andes: he died in Córdoba, Spain, in 1616. His history is counted as the first work by an American-born author to enter the Western canon.

Guaman Poma's illustrated chronicle of Inca life, written for Spain's monarch, resurfaced in 1908 in which city?

Copenhagen's Danish Royal Library had held the manuscript since at least the 1660s. The monarch it was addressed to never received it, and 398 of its pages are full-page drawings.

Which Inca general, whose name means 'stone eye', is said to have hidden Quito's treasure and died without revealing it?

Rumiñawi burned the city rather than hand it over, tradition says, and had the hoard thrown into a lake or buried in snow. Captured and tortured, he never gave it up.

Which viceroy of Peru had the last independent Inca executed and forced Andean villagers into new settlements?

Francisco de Toledo governed for more than eleven years and is often called the best of Peru's viceroys, yet his 'reductions' uprooted whole communities to ease taxation and conversion.

What were the cloistered girls called who were chosen around age ten to weave and serve in Inca temples?

Acllas lived in houses of up to 200 women and trained for about four years. Many were later given as brides to men who had served the empire with distinction.

Which Andean word names a revered object or shrine, such as those built along ceremonial routes through Cusco?

Huaca is a term for anything revered, most often a monument. Andean belief gave every object two spirits, one that created it and one that brought it to life.

What was the name of the extended kin group, holding its own territory, that formed the basic community of Andean life?

Ayllu membership gave each household more security on the land it farmed. The clans predate the Incas, outlasted Spanish colonial government and still exist in Andean villages.

Inca spies at Cajamarca reported that which member of Pizarro's party knew how to make people young again?

The barber, Francisco López, had been watched at work by the emperor's scouts. The chronicles say the Inca meant to keep him as a captive craftsman, along with a weaponsmith.

Which balsa raft, sailed by Thor Heyerdahl from Peru to Polynesia in 1947, took its name from an Inca god?

Kon-Tiki was said to be an old name for the Inca creator god. Heyerdahl and five companions sailed for 101 days before the raft smashed onto a reef in the Tuamotus.

Which Holy Roman Emperor did the Spanish friar at Cajamarca demand that the Inca accept as his sovereign?

Charles V had met Pizarro in person and heard his account of the lands to the south. In Spain he reigned as Charles I.